Chapter One
Times are Changing
“You’ve made a terrible mistake,” the roar of the wind whispered. I shifted, trying to get my eyes to adjust to the sands of time whipping through the darkness. I attempted to speak, but my mouth filled with blood. “You will regret it.” Once my eyes were accustomed to the empty void, I saw nothing. “Take a deep breath.” I did as the voice said, and I could hear my breath whistling through my fingers. My throat had been slashed open, so I could barely take a breath at all, but my mind flashed with white hot nothingness. The hot sand slammed into my open throat, causing a searing pain to push through my flesh and fuse it together. “You owe me,” the nothingness said. Before it left, I saw the brilliant sand colored eyes of a beast waft over a dune.
I sat there, clutching my throat, trying to make sense of my surroundings, but I had no idea what was happening. I knew that I didn’t have memory loss, but I was in too much pain to quite understand what was happening in the moment. I laid my head back in a colder portion of the sand, and I stared into the sky. My voice struggled up my neck, but only gurgling came out of my mouth. It was interesting that I didn’t remember my voice or my name just then, but I figured it would come back to me, eventually.
I kicked my legs up, and they skimmed across the surface. It was easy enough to struggle up onto my feet, but the world around me might as well have been entirely sand. How the hell did I get here? For another moment, I looked around to make sure that I wasn’t actually in Hell. Honestly, though I didn’t know if I had done anything worthy of going to Hell. Probably. At least maybe.
The most logical thing to do was wander away from the wind. At least then I wouldn’t get hit in the face by stray sand trying to sleep in my eyes. I stumbled up a dune, and just as I got to the top, I slid down the other side. “Grrgggegfuskgggrhhyogrrru.” Now, I knew for sure that I couldn’t speak.
An arrow buried itself in the sand next to my head, and I let out a gurgling moan. Was I honestly being shot at now? What in the Hell had I done? There was Hell again. Instinctively, I rolled to the left, and a bullet smashed into my shoulder. I screamed, but it sounded inhuman.
“You ought to speak, if you value your life!” The mysterious person said from behind the blackened sand. I pressed my hand into my throat as hard as I could, but still couldn’t manage actual words.
“ARRGHMMRPH!” I screeched as loud as I possible could.
“As a fair man, I am going to give you one more chance. Speak!” The mysterious person bellowed.
I pressed even harder into my throat, trying to connect my vocal cords through sheer force. “CCKKCAAAAHNNNNHHT!”
“Whatever you’re trying to say. It ain’t quite working, but you don’t quite sound like one of those black blooded pale assbiters. Gonna make me come all the way down there? Just so I don’t feel like a murderer, huh? That’s fair.” A portion of the blackness peeled away from the air, and a woman garbed in faded brown fabric stumbled through the hole. “Human?” She asked
“GGGRRYHHHEZZZ,” I struggled out, but then as she raised her bow, it shifted into a rifle effortlessly. As she flipped it around, she pointed it at me. In that split moment, I nodded with tears blurring my vision. It was the only human thing I could do.
He eyes narrowed, and the rifle shifted into a t-shirt gun. Once she fired it, a white t-shirt wrapped itself around my chest, and restrained my arms behind my back. It was a straight jacket. I fell backwards once the strap that connected the front and back halves of the jacket wrapped up between my legs.
“So, I don’t actually ucking know what you are. But you aren’t what I am and you aren’t one of those. My policy on that front is to figure it out before I put an ax in your neck.” She moved closer, pulling the red tinted glasses away from her head, and inspected me. For the most part she kept about a third more than an arm's length away from me until she saw my neck. “Looks like someone already tried. Vengeance or something else?” Her t-shirt canon shifted into a little white slug that attached itself to her neck. “Trust him that much?” She said as she turned her head to the slug. Slowly, it nodded. “You are always trying to get me in trouble.” The woman grabbed me by the arm and tossed me through the hole in the darkness.
“Scan him.”
I landed inside of a glass box on the opposite side of the containment unit, while the woman landed on the other side near a console lit up by lights. There seemed to be seven or eight motionless people stranded around her, just watching.
She flashed a laser at me, and then she looked at me. “Scan complete.” She threw the laser pointer into the darkness beyond.
“Arrrghghrg?” I growled.
“Wondering about the scan?” She said. The white slug on her shoulder turned into a ball peen hammer, and she smashed the glass box. “You are okay with me. You?” The hammer glowed brilliant white and morphed back into the slug. “What am I saying, I knew that you were okay with it.”
She wrapped her arm around mine and yanked me onto my feet, which were surprisingly strong enough to hold me up. “Arrrgh.”
“They,” she gestured behind her to the motionless people, “call me Alpha. I’m the pilot of this ship shape ship shaped ship.” She paused to look at my neck again. “I assume you have a name. Or at least a preferred sound.”
I had no idea what sound to make, and she seemed to notice.
“Don’t worry. I won’t give you a name that doesn’t fit.”
Sounds great!
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